[CentOS] timekeeping on VMware guests

Tue Oct 13 23:34:59 UTC 2009
Ray Van Dolson <rayvd at bludgeon.org>

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 04:31:03PM -0700, nate wrote:
> Carlos Santana wrote:
> > Howdy,
> >
> > I am having time-drift issues on my CentOS VM. I had referred to
> > following documentation:
> > http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/VMWare_Server , however it didn't
> > help. I used kickstart for creating this VM and I am listing important
> > steps in ref to timekeeping issue. Any comments or suggestion would be
> > appreciated.
> 
> [..]
> > VMware Tools not installed.
> 
> You should certainly install vmware tools, and enable time sync to
> the guest. Also don't run an ntp server in a Vmware VM.

This is what I'd always thought, but the VMware KB link[1] referenced
in the other reply in this thread seems to indicate that best practice
is to use NTP + kernel w/ clock/divider options (unless it's new enough
to not need it) and to *not* use the VMware Tools host time sync.

That said, you should certainly still have VMware Tools installed, it
just sounds like the host time sync is no longer preferred...

Also note that they recommend you remove the local time source in
ntp.conf...

Ray

[1] http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1006427